North Africa/Middle East

Saudi Arabia’s leadership has taken up the challenge of weaning the kingdom from its dependence on oil. Ahmed Ameen is just trying to keep his mobile-phone store open, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr. Ameen hired a foreign worker to operate the shop in Saudi Arabia’s capital four months ago, but the worker left the kingdom after learning that a key part of the government’s economic strategy is to replace foreign workers with Saudis. “My shop is now closed and every day I’m losing money,” said Mr. Ameen, who has a day job and can’t run it himself.

Saudi Arabia’s credit rating has been downgraded by Moody’s because of the long and deep slump in oil prices, The Guardian reported. Moody’s Investors Service said it also downgraded Gulf oil producers Bahrain and Oman. It left ratings unchanged for other Gulf states including Kuwait and Qatar. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter. Moody’s cut the country’s long-term issuer rating one notch to A1 from Aa3 after a review that began in March. Crude prices fell from more than $100 in mid-2014 to under $30 a barrel in February, although they have recovered into the mid-$40s.

Saudi Arabia has announced a series of market reforms aiming to make its $400bn bourse more attractive to foreign investors ahead of a much-anticipated listing of state oil company Saudi Aramco, the Financial Times reported. The Capital Market Authority, the market regulator, plans by the first half of next year to implement the new regulations, including allowing securities lending and covered short selling, a first for the markets of the Gulf states. Limits on qualified foreign investors in companies listed on the bourse, known as Tadawul, will also be lifted.

Saudi Arabia unveiled plans to free the kingdom from its dependence on oil revenues, in part by selling a stake in its state-owned oil company and creating the world’s largest sovereign-wealth fund, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move represents an ambitious attempt to lay out a new economic trajectory for the country in an era of cheap oil. It is the brainchild of Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 30-year-old son of King Salman, who was entrusted by his father to oversee what are likely to be jarring changes in the kingdom.

Dubai-based property developer Limitless is set to complete a drawn-out debt restructuring after the final dissenting creditor sold its share of the company's 4.45 billion dirhams ($1.2 billion) debt, sources with knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. New York-based Stonehill Capital Management sold its debt in the state-controlled company, worth around $15 million at face value, to Dubai Islamic Bank, an existing creditor and one of the members of the creditor committee, the sources said.

Saudi Arabia is raising $10bn from a consortium of global banks as the kingdom embarks on its first international debt issuance in 25 years to counter dwindling oil revenues and reserves, CNBC reported on a Financial Times story. The landmark five-year loan, a signal of Riyadh's newfound dependence on foreign capital, opens the way for Saudi to launch its first international bond issue. It comes as the sustained slump in crude encourages other Gulf governments, such as Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Oman, to tap international bond markets.

The International Monetary Fund has successfully concluded negotiations for a $2.8bn bailout for Tunisia, the latest in a series of loans to countries in north Africa and the Middle East to help them cope with the stresses posed by a growing influx of refugees and a collapse in oil prices. Tunisia, which was home to the uprising that set off the 2011 Arab Spring, has been struggling to cope with the political and economic transition since the overthrow of Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali, the country’s former dictator.

An Abu Dhabi state fund said publicly for the first time on Monday that it hadn’t received billions of dollars in payments that a controversial Malaysian fund set up by Prime Minister Najib Razak claims it sent, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Al Jaber Group missed a March repayment on its $4.5 billion restructuring, three sources aware of the matter told Reuters on Tuesday, adding pressure on the Abu Dhabi-based conglomerate to quickly secure a new debt deal to save it from collapse. The family-owned group, best known as a contractor but with interests in a host of other sectors, has struggled after borrowing extensively at the end of the last decade to expand only to be caught out by a local economic slowdown.

A top Saudi prince has announced new elements of a plan to reduce the kingdom’s heavy dependence on oil, amid a drop in world prices that has sent shock waves through the Saudi economy. The plans include publicly selling shares of the state oil giant, Saudi Aramco, and routing much of its worth into a public investment fund, said the prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in an interview with Bloomberg published Friday, the International New York Times reported. The fund could become the world’s largest, he said, with more than $2 trillion in assets.